“The work to create the museum took place within the context of intense public scrutiny, divergent expectations of what would be appropriate to present at such an emotionally charged site and the daunting responsibility of constructing a narrative that would codify a history not yet written.”

Greenwald said at each stage of the design process, the museum had to consider what was appropriate to display and the fact that, as 9/11 was relatively recent, people are still traumatised by the event.

“Among the core issues was how to balance commemoration with the imperatives of education, historical documentation and the presentation of information that is both graphic and provocative,” she said.

The 9/11 Memorial Museum will cost $24 to enter, although admission to the 9/11 Memorial, which has attracted 11.5 million people since opening two years ago, will remain free.

The museum and the memorial together cost $700m to construct, with a combined operating budget of $60m a year.

The museum is divided into two main exhibition spaces. In Memorium sits under the footprint of the south tower and commemorates the 2,983 people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks and in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1983.

The other main exhibition space, which sits under the footprint of the north tower, looks at the day of the 9/11 attacks, what came before them and how 9/11 continues to affect the world.

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Unlike every other memorial on planet earth at the site of the historic event it is supposed to be commemorating, the eight acre billion dollar "Nat'l Sept. 11 Memorial" at the WTC bans all authentic artifacts of the WTC. To preserve, as memorial officials put it, "the integrity of the design."

For 30 years the Sphere stood in the center of the WTC as a symbol of world peace. On 9/11 it emerged from the ruins badly damaged but the only artifact to survive intact. Today, while millions visit the pristine, anti-septic memorial, absent of any reminders of the attacks, the Sphere sits blocks away next to a Korean War memorial. See facebook, save the sphere. Google Michael Burke, WTC Sphere. savethesphere@gmail.com